Save Article

The Foreign-Bribery Sinkhole at Justice

The average time to conclude a case: more than seven years. The cost to companies: huge.

By

Paul Pelletier

April 20, 2015 7:27 p.m. ET

Following the Enron scandal, President Bush established a Corporate Fraud Task Force in July 2002 that tasked the Justice Department with ensuring that fraud investigations progressed with “promptness and thoroughness.” For several years Justice’s investigations did.

Unfortunately, in recent years such investigations—especially allegations of bribery under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act—have been drawn out interminably, legal...